“When the iPhone was introduced in 2007, and later when the iPhone SDK (now iOS SDK) was introduced in 2008, Apple explained how it was all based on a similar foundation to OS X, and even named the new frameworks Cocoa Touch, reflecting the Objective-C Cocoa frameworks of the Mac,” Rene Ritchie writes for iMore. “There were and are differences, to be sure, but that core similarity not only made the iPhone, and later the iPad, instantly familiar to existing Mac developers, it made it interesting.”

“The Mac, though its market share was never large, especially when compared to the well over 90% marketshare of Microsoft Windows-based PCs, had always attracted an incredibly talented, incredibly dedicated group of developers who cared deeply about things like design and user experience. OS X enjoyed not only the traditional Mac OS community, but the NeXT one as well,” Ritchie writes. “That talent share always felt disproportionate to the market share. Massively. And a lot of those developers, and new developers influenced by them, not only wanted iPhones and iPads, but wanted to create software for them.”

Ritchie writes, “iOS attracted non-Mac developers as well, to be sure, and game developers, and inspired a slew of brand new developers as well. However, when you take a look at some of the best and brightest apps on the App Store – Twitterrific and Tweetbot and Letterpress and Screens and Omni Focus and Fantastical and Vesper and on and on – they come from people with a background at Apple or on the Mac. And they come from people with no interest, at least thus far, in writing for any other platform. They come from people who self-identify, take pride in, and have considerable passion for being Apple developers. (And that doesn’t include any of the Apple-made apps, like iWork and iLife, which are among the best in mobile and, of course, iOS only.)”

13 Comments

I think what attracts developers is how extensive in terms of numbers sold and market penetration a platform is and how much money it pays them, although it is debatable whether developers are looking for money or name recognition in for example developing a free app like Twitter, Facebook and Waze. I think Waze maps are great for navigating around and it’s a pity that Apple lost out to Google in buying it. I think developers are still attracted by the platform both from immediate financial benefits and as potential takeover targets, e.g., Dropbox, Tumblr (since bought by Yahoo), and Instagram (since bought by Facebook).

It is important not to neglect the market penetration aspect of a platform and in this Apple would be remiss to concentrate purely on profits in terms of measuring how successful the iPhone is because the network effect that results from mass (market momentum if you will) is just as important in terms of receiving the best apps from the best developers.

One thing left out of the article is the cost of development is higher on Android with the need to support such a fragmented user base, and also the fact that the Android install base has proven much less willing to pay for apps.

So tell me, where is the software development company who’s going to go head-to-head with Intuit on the Mac platform? It is surely a space that needs filling. I’ve tried every one of the pretenders on the Mac platform, and no one of them comes close to the degree of completeness of the Windows version of the Intuit software. Where is the competition in this arena? Is every Mac developer and user so right-brained as to believe that no one should want or need to use personal finance tracking software?

I recently had to go back to Visual Studio [C#] to do a project where I needed to look at some code. It was awful. I did find a few things that I had thought I missed about VS, but when I revisited them, I quickly came to realization that the XCode/Mac way of doing things was more well thought out. It seemed like feature-less a few years ago when I switched, but it was more feature-not needed, or worse, feature-could really muck things up. I have been on Macs for a few years and absolutely dread the PC [some family members have], Windows [especially 8], Android [and the dismal following it had created]. I will not program for Android if I can eat without doing so!!!